White House Computer Systems Attacked by Hackers

Authorities revealed that recently, computer systems at the White House have been hacked into, the police stating they believed the computer servers had been compromised by Chinese hackers, who thus came into the possession of several e-mails between government officials. The electronic correspondence did not contain any classified information, authorities added.
The hackers only breached the servers for short periods of time, just enough to steal the e-mails, ceasing each attack before United States computer experts could manage to patch the vulnerabilities in the systems.
U.S. government cyber intelligence professionals reckon that the hacking was sponsored by China’s government, reasoning that the targeted nature of the attacks had made them to reach that conclusion. Nevertheless, they have admitted of the fact that it was almost impossible to trace the electronic information theft back to the source.
The Chinese intelligence is known for its particular method of taking hold of bulks of info, only to afterwards search for the pieces it needs through the whole amount, which lends weight to police officials’ belief that the attacks have been requested by the Chinese government.
This summer, a similar incident was reported with regards to Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s campaign computer networks, when U.S. government cyber experts informed that hackers had downloaded information that offered insight into the candidates’ political views.
At that time, cyber investigators found that the aforementioned attacks had also originated in China, but they were not able to track down the organisation behind the hackings.

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Microsoft to unveil test version of Windows 7

The next version of Microsoft Windows, the software that defines the computing experience for most people, will nag users much less than its much-maligned predecessor, Vista. PC users will be able to test the new edition early next year.

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Windows Mobile OS Running on an iPhone

We're not quite sure why anyone would want to do this, but a Norwegian programmer claims to have created an application that allows you to run the Windows Mobile operating system on your iPhone. The programmer, Erik Kristiansen, showed off his app in action at the recent myPhone2008 convention in Las Vegas.
Kristiansen's application operates similar to Apple's Bootcamp in that it allows you to load either the iPhone OS or the Windows Mobile OS when the iPhone boots up. Running Windows Mobile, the iPhone appears to have full functionality as a Windows smartphone, including (of course) making phone calls. Kristiansen's program is currently in beta, but he says it should be available as an open source application in January.

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Intelligent Computers Put To The Test

Researchers are planning to conduct an experiment at the University of Reading to see if humans can be fooled into thinking they are talking with another human, when in fact they will be talking with a machine. The experiment is a homage to mathematician, logician and cryptographer Alan Turning, who originally proposed the Turing Test, in which a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which try to appear human; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test."Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.In the 'Turing test' a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be 'thinking'.No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - 'artificial conversational entities' - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognized 'thinking' machine."If you ask me, these guys are about two decades late. After all, Creative Labs unleashed Dr. Sbaitso on the world with the original Sound Blaster was back in 1992. Dr. Sbaitso could not only converse, he was a doctor for darn sake. Although I hear he wasn't a very good one...
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7 Really Awesome Things About Google Chrome

1. Blazing fast
Chrome actually uses WebKit for rendering Web pages, the same rendering engine as Safari, which is known to be very fast. Put that in a simple, well optimized, stripped down shell and you get the fastest Web browser around. It loads fast, it displays pages fast, and we’re talking noticeable differences here, which really makes it a joy to use. Don’t just take my word for it, check out some early benchmarks

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Are You Allergic to Wireless Internet?

Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS) is a condition in which people are highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields. In an area such as a wireless hotspot, they experience pain or other symptoms.
People with EHS experience a variety of symptoms including headache, fatigue, nausea, burning and itchy skin, and muscle aches. These symptoms are subjective and vary between individuals, which makes the condition difficult to study, and has left experts divided about the validity of such claims.
More than 30 studies have been conducted to determine what link the condition has to exposure to electromagnetic fields from sources such as radar dishes, mobile phone signals and, Wi-Fi hotspots
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Windows 7 multi-touch LCD demonstrated

Multi-touch is one of the big technology trends these days: Bill Gates recently demonstrated a display integrating multi-touch at the recent D6 conference and unfortunately received little more than lukewarm feedback. Albatron is one of the first companies demonstrating what appears to be a production ready multi-touch device: Having played with the LCD at Computex, we have to say that we are impressed.

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